The Truth About Yoda
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Long ago, in an America not so
far from us, really, captivity narratives were all the rage. A captivity
narrative is the harrowing tale of someone captured by the Indians, someone who
had to—gasp—live with the savages, and suffer all the
mistreatment and indignities. Then, come the sixties and seventies, the
spiritual descendants of all those captivity survivors started wearing beads
and vests and headbands, and growing their hair out, and resisting the
government.
Right
around then, we got Star Wars.
Those
captivity narratives had never stopped happening, though. At least not for me.
Growing up Indian, when the people up on the screen aren't
like you but you kind of like them all the same, the obvious thing to do, it's abduct them. Make them come live with you. I was capturing
people left and right. Rambo, because he had a headband and a cool knife. John
McClain from Die Hard; his guerrilla warfare tactics fit right in. Conan
the Barbarian, because he could teach these town people a thing or two.
Spider-Man, because he lived with his aunt, and always had trouble coming up
with enough change to buy his school lunch. Kyle Reese from Terminator,
because he looks like the guy who hangs out by the gas pumps, and has stories
you can't begin to believe.
Star
Wars too. Star Wars first, even.
Broad-stroke,
Star Wars is a crew of die-hard rebels pitted against the
big dark evil Empire—the Empire that has wave after wave of white
infantry to send out into the (star)field. And, where the Empire has not just
bigger guns, but the biggest gun ever, what the rebels have are these elegant,
cool, traditional weapons. And they've got X-wing fighters too, the trustiest
ponies ever, which they use to slash in for raid after raid, and then they're
gone again before the Empire even knows what's happened.
Darth
Vader? More like Darth Custer.
And,
Leia, with her Hopi hairdo, her homeland isn't just
taken from her, it's turned to (space)rubble. But that just makes her fight
harder. Luke, he's been adopted out of his tribe, has been forced into
(space)farming, but is always looking up to the sky for home. Is there a more
Indian name than Skywalker? Maybe: Han Solo, that living embodiment of an
Indian who is not going to wait to get his request to cross the
reservation line approved. He just hits that hyperspace button and goes.
And, like all Indians, he believes in Bigfoot. He has to: Bigfoot's his
copilot. And don't forget that Luke and Leia being twins, so many of the tribes
have stories about twins either messing up or saving the world—sometimes
both. It's what they do.
What
really gives away that Star Wars
is Native, though, it's Yoda. He's an Indian grandmother if there ever was one.
Not because he's nine hundred years old and on a cane, not because the words
he's translating in his head always come out in the wrong order, and not
because he's where messed-up kids retreat to, to figure a few things out. It's
because about the first thing he says, it's "How do you get so big eating food
of this kind?" It's because his refrain, it's pretty much "Hear you nothing
that I say?" It's because he tells this gangly kid stumbling through his house
that "You must unlearn what you have learned." It's because he always has a pot
of something cooking over the fire. It's because he turns that stumbling boy
into a warrior.
Yeah,
I needed some Indian role models, growing up. I needed some Indian heroes.
And
I didn't have to go far, far away.
I
just had to go to the theater.
Thank
you, Star Wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xToufbDHDsI
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